


Find Yourself

by Blue_Storm (Spillz)



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst, Cheating, F/F, F/M, Married Couple, based on kya and bumi's daddy issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-07-28 18:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 6,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7653010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spillz/pseuds/Blue_Storm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katara and Zuko both spent their youth unhappy.<br/>Their children are grown, their marriages are complicated, their roles in the world are up for debate.<br/>When looking for herself Katara stumbles onto him and finds something almost as good; love.<br/>And then she finds herself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Intuition

 

 

> _I tried to make a home out of you._

Their son is seven by the time their daughter was born. People speculated, of course, unable to comprehend why The Last Airbender wasn’t more focused on bringing new ones into the world. They think perhaps Master Katara is not the motherly type, but all those who have met her know this to be untrue. Some say that as a monk the Avatar is uninterested in his wife, but it is quite the opposite, he has loved her since he first saw her.

 

 

> _But doors lead to trap doors._

And she loves him. Katara loves Aang, but without meaning to he is hurting her. He doesn't realise, doesn't understand that she did not marry him to raise children alone. She tells him this, only once, and he stays with her for a whole year. He teaches his son the flute and Katara conceives their daughter.

Katara is six months pregnant when Aang leaves again.

 

 

> _A stairway leads to nothing._  

Kya is a waterbender, this is clear as day. Bumi is not a bender at all, that is clear too. It is also clear that whenever Aang looks at them he is disappointed. When he looked at her round stomach he would tell the stories of his culture, of the legacy he was passing on. But now that they are separate from her and their futures set, he has far less to say. Katara wants him to be happy, and when it becomes clear that their last child is an airbender, he is happier than she could have ever hoped.

But Katara is not.

 

 

> _Unknown women wander the hallways at night._

Katara no longer knows who she is. She cannot remember when she lost her old self, maybe when she when she stopped training daily, maybe when she stopped being invited on missions, maybe when she got married. When she teaches Kya to use her bending she almost feels herself again, but it is just out of reach.

She stands under the full moon some nights, trying to remember how the power used to feel. She bends her own blood, raising her feet from the ground and flying.

No, flying is freedom and life, Aang is the one who flys. What Katara does is more like hovering, going nowhere. Trapped by her own love.

 

 

> _Where do you go when you go quiet?_

Once, when Aang is staying at their home, Katara is the one to disappear. She thinks that she will visit her brother but she finds herself visiting a bar instead. She doesn't drink, but she listens to the music and the lives around her and tries to remember what it was like to have one.

“Hey, aren’t you the Avatar’s wife?" The barmaid asks when Katara sits down. That’s how she is known. Not as Master Katara who made bending a right for all genders, who beat the first bloodbender at her own game, who took down a firebending prodigy on the night of Sozin’s Comet. Now she was the Avatar’s wife, the mother of the Avatar's children, Katara is just an old story.

 

 

> _You remind me of my father, a magician; able to exist in two places at once._

The first time Aang left her, Bumi was two. There is a note about urgent business in the Fire Nation, the excuse is rational but so is her heartbreak when she wakes up alone.

He is gone for longer than he said would be just like he always was in the war. He leaves her with all of the responsibility just like her father did. Even with all the honourable intentions in the world, Katara cannot help but feel abandoned when the one that she loves is gone when she gets home.

Just like her mother. 

 

 

> _In the tradition of men in my blood, you come home at 3 a.m. and lie to me._

He starts to relate an epic tale to the boy in Katara’s lap, of dragons and kings and fire. Katara listens, but does not smile, she can see that Aang loves the words he says but she doesn’t. Because she used to help tell them, not listen. Because the insistence that he missed them is not as honest as when he tells them how wonderful he felt to be gone.

Because Aang might love the words more than her and she cannot accept that. Not yet.

 

 

> _What are you hiding?_

She sees Sokka as a leader; respected and well liked. She sees Toph too; revered by earthbenders across the world. She tells them she is happy, even though now when Aang leaves he takes their youngest with him and the others are old enough to ask her why. Even though training a child and taking down armies are not even comparable. Even though her friends are reaching all the potential they were meant to and she is still hovering. She is not sure she will ever stop.

 

 

> _The past and the future merge to meet us here._

When Zuko’s visit to Republic city happens to coincide with Sokka’s birthday they agree to make a night of it. Katara has left her children with a sitter and dressed down, she listened to Aang’s apologies but she leaves them behind and enjoys her night out. And, though the reunion doesn’t feel quite the same without him, Katara feels part of who she used to be returning to her.

She understands what Aang does is important, she understands why him teaching Tenzin is different from her teaching Kya.

Katara is nothing if not understanding.

 

 

> _What luck._

When she married the Avatar people across the world expressed their envy alongside their congratulations. She too had thought herself lucky to have such a devoted husband. His eyes overflow with adoration when he looks at here. He loves her, more than could possibly be put into words. He loves her as a mother, as a diplomat, and as a teacher. But Katara is more than those things. She is a person, and she realises too late that Aang may not know that person well enough to love her at all.

 

 

> _What a fucking curse._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by the poetic works of Warsan Shire


	2. Denial

 

> _I tried to change._

Mai knew that he suspected something, she was not sure to what extent he imagined she had found herself disillusioned with him, but he did know. She could tell because he became more present, she could tell because he started talking to her about family. He was trying to get close to her only after she had drifted away.

It was too little, too late. 

 

> _Closed my mouth more, tried to be softer, prettier, less awake._

A Fire Lady must appear to be loving and gentle, she exists as the antithesis of her husband. Where Zuko inspired fear and worship, she was supposed to be more accessible; the royalty for the people.

Mai hated it. She was not a people person, she could serve the nation as a soldier, serve her husband as a wife, but diplomacy bored her. Her life was boring her.

And when Mai got bored, she got mean. 

 

> _Slowly did not speak another word._

It was not a conscious decision to stop talking to Zuko, simply that she could never find anything in her to say that wasn’t criticism and eventually she tired of fighting and so she stopped trying. She greeted him formally in front of the courtiers, she gave short responses to direct questions, but she didn’t  _talk_ to him.

If Zuko wanted to talk he had his mother, and Mai had Ty Lee.

 

> _I swallowed a sword._

“Why not leave?” Ty Lee asked her once as they lay back on the couch in Mai’s quarters. Mai wasn’t sure how to answer, Izumi had been the reason for years, but she would be of age soon. Soon Zuko would abstain and Izumi would be Fire Lord. Soon Mai would be expected to follow Zuko around the world on whatever adventure he thought would remind himself of his youth. Soon her life would be unpredictable again, there would be no set rules governing it, so why not leave?

“Maybe I will, ” She said “If you come with me”

 

> _I levitated._

Zuko was not unloved; he had a family now, mother, daughter, sister. If he wanted a new wife or even a mistress he wouldn’t have to look far. But he didn’t want to give up Mai, not fully, but he also didn’t know where to even start fixing things.

“Are you sure you’re okay with this?” His mother asked the week after he and Mai stopped eating together. Zuko wasn’t okay with any of it, but it wasn’t about him. He was the reason Mai hated her life and he should face the consequences.

 

> _Went to the basement, confessed my sins, and was baptized in a river._

He visits Republic City with a teenage Izumi, Mai turns down his invitation to join them but he expected nothing less. Katara and Toph both have daughters Izumi’s age, it is strange to him that their children do not know each other better, how people who were once like family could have become so distant.

Toph asks how he is and he knows better than to lie. When Katara asks the same question he does not want to. He talks without a censor, like they used to talk.

“I think Mai is in love,” Zuko says out loud for the first time, Katara’s reply is quiet but certain.

“I know that Aang is”

 

> _But still inside me, coiled deep, was the need to know._

He could not go on in silence, he could not live with uncertainty, he had to be sure. If he was sure he could know how to feel and he could actually feel for a change. He was used to seeing Mai and Ty Lee arm in arm, they had been that way forever but now, he didn’t know what had changed but something had.

He knew what love looked like, and he could see it when Mai looked at Ty Lee, he could hear it when they greeted each other, he could almost feel it when they were together. He didn’t begrudge Mai love, she had stuck by him for longer than she had to, she deserved love and when Zuko asked her she told him the truth.

“Yes,” she said, and Zuko somehow felt better than he had in years, and so did Mai. 

 

> _Are you cheating on me?_


	3. Anger

 

> _If it's what you truly want, I can wear her skin over mine._

Renaming Avatar Island was an unpopular move. People liked it, the Avatar was neutral, universal. Katara’s proposed change was not

“There are not enough airbenders to name part of the city after them”

The man’s protest is met with agreement throughout the council, but Katara toppled dynasties as a child, she has words prepared for this

“Tell me, who’s fault is it that there are so few airbenders Governor Chan?”

Her words are intended to sink into the Fire Nation representative and she sees as they do. His reply is full of stammering and apologies.

That was the day Air Temple Island was born.

 

> _Her hair over mine._

Aang was not as proud of her as she’d thought he would be.

“The name isn’t what matters Katara, it’s the people on the island that I love”

He means to be comforting, she can feel his fingers trace her outline but never further. He assumes she is content when she has never been less. A month passes and he leaves with Tenzin again, hurting their children as well as her. Katara is beginning to wonder if any of their views align. He still can't see all of her.

 

> _Her hands as gloves._

Katara tries to become the girl Aang thinks she is, she stops eating meat, stops teaching offensive waterbending, outlaws bloodbending, pushes every dark thought she’s ever had to the bottom of her soul and stamps out the fire of her passion with meditation. She volunteers at the hospital, grows her hair long again, and tells herself this who she is.

When that doesn’t make him stay she is lost again.

 

> _Immortalized ... you and your perfect girl._

Katara does not like to wear the Air Nomad colours, they don’t go with her mother’s necklace or her eyes. They don’t go with her. And yet she thinks if she wears them Aang will visit Air Temple Island more than he visits the Air Temples, she thinks he will lose the craving for a culture he has been missing for decades.

She knows that she is wrong, she knows it is not colours that he chases, but she is a woman running out of options.

 

> _I don't know when love became elusive._

Toph’s daughters have fathers, this is all Katara knows about them. Behind Toph’s unfazed demeanor is fear, she admits she is afraid to tell their fathers in case they don’t want to know. Toph wants her children to ever feel wanted and Katara understands. Aang might love all their children, but he _wanted_ Tenzin.

Toph reminds Katara that if she doesn’t tell Aang that she’s upset, he won’t realise he’s doing something wrong. Tells her that if you think your parents don't love you it messes you up forever. Katara tells Toph she isn’t messed up

“Maybe not, but what if I mess _them_ up Katara?” Katara doesn't reply, she just pulls Toph into a hug and wonders the same thing.

 

> _What I know is, no one I know has it._

Sokka loved without limits, but his feelings faded in and out with the phases of the moon. He loved too much too often until he ran out. Now he barely loves at all, his reputation is as a playboy and he leans into it, into pretty girls and parties. The looks he and Toph sometimes share leave Katara wondering if he is as numb to love as he claims, but Sokka has convinced himself otherwise and he suffers for it. When their father dies Aang is away but Sokka is there, he moves onto Air Temple Island and he takes care of her like she did for him when they lost Mom.

Often, he would tell Katara that she doesn’t have to revolve around Aang, that sometimes love fades and if she doesn’t move on she might become like him; she might forget how love works.

 

> _I think of lovers as trees ... growing to and from one another._

Zuko visits republic city more than Aang does, Mai is never with him and Katara does not ask why; She is in no place to question the relationships of others.

He tells her anyway. He tells her that being Fire Lady and being Mai are mutually exclusive, that he destroyed what they had and realised too late, that Mai already loves someone else.

“That’s what happens when you aren’t there for someone I guess, ” Zuko says, he doesn’t ask where Aang is but the question hangs in the air. They comfort each other with silence and understanding, of what it is like to doubt love.

 

> _Why can't you see me?_

When her oldest son is sixteen he joins the United Forces. When her only daughter is sixteen she leaves to travel the world. Her youngest has been as absent as her husband since he first learned to bend and so Katara is alone.

Sokka saw that she was lonely, Toph saw that she was bored, but Aang didn’t even realise she was unhappy.

Not until she left anyway.

 

> _Everyone else can._


	4. Apathy

 

> _Here lies the body of the love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head._  

Mai and Zuko reach an arrangement; a Fire Lord and Lady can be separated only if they give up their crowns as well as their marriage, once Izumi was old enough they would go their separate ways and both lead full lives. Once they stopped pretending they worked as a couple, their relationship as friends improved tenfold.

“I think I’d like to visit the poles, what are they like?” Mai asks him over dinner

He tells her they are cold and harsh, but they are also beautiful.

“You’ll fit right in Mai”  Ty Lee’s voice is filled with exactly the kind of love that Mai needs.  Zuko is not jealous, he envies Mai for finding what he wants; happiness.

 

> _Here lies the mother of my children, both living and dead._  

Izumi’s right to take the throne had been up for debate for years when it really shouldn't have been, She was the only child of the Fire Lord and her parentage had never been in question, the issue the sages had was her non-bending status. Plenty of governors had suggested he and Mai try and have another child. But due in part to their strained relationship, Mai’s general distaste for being pregnant, and both of their insistence the Izumi would be a great leader, they had refused.

“I don’t know why you’re panicking Dad” Izumi had learned the art of a calm facade from her mother, but this was no trick. Her parents did not often agree on something, but when they did they were formidable like nothing else she’d ever seen.

 

> _Her shroud is loneliness._

He enjoys his time with Mai now, he even spends more with Ty Lee. He loves his mother and his daughter is one of the most exceptional people he has ever encountered. He has people around him, his sister who was once his greatest adversary was now his most trusted advisor and his regular trips to Republic City kept him close to his friends. Zuko couldn’t describe himself as lonely, he had more people in his life now than ever before, but he was missing love. True love that sweeps you up like a tidal wave, or drowns you in a flood, or the kind that creeps up slowly like the tide and the shore.

He knew there was only one person who he could feel like that with, but his chance with her had long since evaporated.

 

> _Her god listening._  

Zuko hands over his crown younger and more willingly than any Fire Lord before him. His daughter is uncontested as she takes the throne, calm and certain she is coronated and Mai and Zuko’s marriage officially ends.

“What are you going to do?” Mai is packed to leave with Ty-Lee and despite her unchanging features, her eyes are shining with excitement. Her question is one that Zuko has been considering a while, there is no _where_ he wants to go as much as there is a _who_.

Two months later he receives a letter tied in blue ribbon, Zuko never imagined he might receive words like that from her, and yet he had. Love was within his reach, and for once Zuko was actually going to grab it.

 

> _Her heaven will be a love without betrayal._


	5. Loss

 

> _She sleeps all day._

She has trouble getting back to herself. Even once out of the home that had become a jail cell, even once she no longer had to wait for an unpredictable love, even then she still didn’t know who she was. The moon helped, and so Katara lived under its light, let its energy fuel her. She spoke to Yue, and in lieu of any reply she found herself on a path, she found herself with purpose again, with life again.

She leads him to her and he leads her towards freedom, Zuko and Katara have always understood each other.

 

> _Dreams of you in both worlds._

She goes to him as if walking on hot coals, quick and determined.

In moments they are teenagers again, their world heightened to levels it takes a lifetime to rationalise. Conversations move to kisses, closeness they have gone without for so long. Katara does not feel guilty giving in to herself, she doesn’t allow herself to feel anything outside of the moment she is in.

She doesn’t miss Aang, she doesn’t miss her children, she doesn’t even miss herself anymore.  She lives and she loves like she doesn’t regret, not anymore.

 

> _That, too, is a form of worship._

Zuko tells her he loves her that first night and Katara doesn’t know why she believes him but she does. She thinks maybe it is the way his eyes lock on hers, not with worship, but as if he is searching eye eyes the way she searches his.

She feels human with Zuko, she feels real. When he looks at her he sees her, when he holds her he feels her, when he says he loves her he means it.

“I love you Zuko” Katara means it too, she loves and is loved and she is happy. She had almost forgotten how that felt.

 

> _Dear moon, we blame you for the flush of blood._

They lie together on the soft grass underneath the black sheet of night. Katara stares up at the moon, at Yue, and Zuko stares at Katara.

“It’s full” Zuko states the obvious, but his implications go far deeper. A full moon grants Katara the kind of power he felt at Sozin’s comet, but every single month. She can feel the blood running underneath his skin and hers, she can feel life underneath her fingertips and she can end it. She made that illegal, she made bending anyone’s body illegal, but not her own.

She lifts herself off the ground, hovers over Zuko like a spirit, like a ghost. He stands up, nothing but wonder in his eyes as she leans down to kiss him,

 

> _We blame you for the night, for the dark._

It is later, when rain forces them to sleep indoors that the night rears its uglier head. Flashes of electricity in the distance send shudders through Zuko’s body as if they were striking him directly. Katara places cool hands on his chest and kisses tears off his cheeks.

“You are safe” she promises, hoping her words will be enough to reach him, to bring him back. She looks at him until he looks back, until his eyes focus again, until his heart slows and his breathing steadies.

Until the storm quiets.

 

> _For the ghosts._


	6. Accountability

 

 

> _You look nothing like your mother._

His hair is as long as his Father’s now, he is not sure when this happened only that it is tradition and he followed it. The courtier’s preferred it, Mai did not. Katara has never seen his father and runs her fingers through it as though it were just another part of him to love. She does the same with his scars, loves the ugliest parts of him just as she does the rest.

He asks her why once, why puckered skin and damage don’t repulse her, why he doesn’t repulse her. She looks at him for a long while, before wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him close.

“You are you, everything else is decoration.” 

 

 

> _You look everything like your mother._

Katara tells him that she sees more Ursa in him than Ozai. Ursa is soft-edged but passionate, she is wild power contained in formal robes, she is a beautiful ice sculpture that can burn your fingertips.

Katara sees all of this and more in Zuko, she sees a man who made the right choices when his life would have been so much simpler with the wrong ones, she sees a man who has forgotten how to be selfish, a man who she could love until her heart gives out.

She does not see Ozai’s son, she sees Zuko.

 

 

> _Let me make up for the years he made you wait._

“Are you crazy?” her words do not faze him, they are bubbles on the surface of her lake as deep as an ocean. Her eyes do not leave his, her smile could split her face in two, her hands grip his without wavering. Katara’s laugh rings out and Zuko wants to listen to it for a lifetime. He wants this, he wants her -he wants them- forever. He has asked this question before and does not hesitate to ask it again

“I might be, but I mean it Katara, will you marry me?” he has barely finished before Katara is kissing him her reply.

 

 

> _Do his eyes close like doors?_

The Fire Nation Palace is the only thing Zuko’s life that never changes, he has left it three times and each time he returns to the same building he remembered. Walking through its hallways flashes thousands of memories. He remembers being a child, searching the corridors for the mother who vanished, he remembers being a father, chasing down a hyperactive toddler. He remembers being a teenager, desperately trying to please his a man who did not love him.

All these memories mesh together, the cherished and the hated become one blanket of the past. When Katara’s hand rests on his shoulder, he sees only the present, and whispers of a future.

 

 

> _Are you a slave to the back of his head?_

“So you two finally got together” Azula’s greeting takes them both by surprise, she has always had a knack for sneaking up on people.

“How did you know?”

“What do you mean _finally!_ ”

Azula laughs at their red faces and shakes her head, her brother never could figure out when she was bluffing. She hugs him and he smiles at her, Zuko loves his sister for all the reasons they used to fight. He loves her because she is cunning and talented and because she finds love so confusing. He makes up for all the poison Ozai planted in her with forgiveness and in return, she learns to be his sister and not his adversary.

And she has known he was going marry Katara since he took the lightning bolt she had aimed so well all those years ago.

 

 

> _Am I talking about your husband or your father?_


	7. Reformation

 

 

> _He bathes me until I forget their names and faces._

In the Royal Palace, there are a lot more ponds than you would expect from the Fire Nation. Katara makes it her business to bend in them all. She decides that the fountain that runs in the South Courtyard is her favourite, maybe it is the way that it always has just the right amount of sun, maybe it is the way the constant streaming of the water feels steady and calming, maybe it is because Zuko practices in the South Courtyard every morning.

  
She finds herself waking with the sunrise to practice with him, she finds herself turning drills into sparring matches, she finds herself ankle deep in fountain water and in his arms.

  
She doesn’t however, find herself actually finding herself.

 

 

> _Why are you afraid of love?_

There is so much to love in the Fire Nation; the food, the weather, the silks, Zuko. Katara is not unhappy there, she is not alone or restricted, she is not forgotten or neglected. But she is also not herself. Not yet.

  
“Something’s still wrong.” Zuko notices what Aang did not and he tries to fix it. Katara is given a role among the governors, she spars with Zuko every day, she helps Ursa in the gardens, she is even visited by her children.  
But she still doesn’t feel like herself.

 

 

> _You think it's not possible for someone like you._

There is word from the South of a rogue gang of bloodbenders attempting to seize control. When the scroll arrives asking for her assistance she knows that she must leave. She knows this, and yet she cannot shake the guilt. Guilt that she is abandoning another family, that she is being selfish, that she should be happy with what she has.

She knows that she must leave anyway.

 

 

> _But you are the love of my life._

She braces herself for a fight, for Zuko insist his wife stay with him, for him to suggest sending Fire Nation armies to deal with the problem instead.

  
But Zuko doesn’t protest, he asks what she needs. He offers his help, and when she turns it down he asks her to be safe. Katara is grateful, not for his permission, she doesn’t need that. She is grateful for his understanding. Grateful for love that is not an uphill battle.

  
When she returns months later, victorious and glowing, her name is once again known across the four nations. Not as the wife of the Avatar or the Firelord, but as the greatest waterbending master in living memory.

 

 

> _You are the love of my life._


	8. Forgiveness

 

> _If we're gonna heal, let it be glorious._

What exactly changed he doesn’t know, but he is glad it has. It is like Katara has grown a foot taller, she is louder, brighter, less sorry. She spars with Azula now, and Izumi. She has taken to carrying her waterskin again and she travels the world from old friend to old friend, and back to Zuko. She spent too long chained by duty and in her freedom, she found what she had really been looking for.

Zuko watches her as she watches the moon, her face content and her body powerful, she turns to him, her eyes mirroring the love in his.

“Thank you Zuko” He tilts his head to the side at her words, he has done nothing to contribute to this self-discovery. She pulls his face close to hers, the kiss is unremarkable and perfect “You let me feel free” she leans her forehead against his

“As if I could ever keep you trapped,” he says as she settles onto his lap

“You don’t want to trap me, and that’s why I'm free”

 

> _Do you remember being born?_

Ursa invites Katara for tea whenever she is in the palace and Katara is grateful for it. It is simple to sit with Ursa, she is a mother in every way, she listens to the tales of Katara’s new adventures and reminds her to look out for herself as well as the world

“Use Sunfruit oil on it twice a day.” Ursa says when Katara complains of a stiff neck  “And take a few days rest, you have been too busy”

“I like busy” Katara replies, pouring the tea. Ursa tells Katara how busy she had made herself when she was first pregnant, how she had wanted to run the palace single-handedly and how she had worn herself out so badly that, when it was time for Zuko to be born, she could barely rise out of bed.

“Save your energy Katara, there are always times when you will need it more”

 

> _Are you thankful for the hips that cracked?_

The South Pole sent a letter, offering to honour Katara with a statue in the center of the city, thankful for all she has done. The pride that fills her quickly sours. She is the only woman in Water Tribe history to ever be honoured this way, but she shouldn’t be.

She turns down their offer, instead, she travels home to pitch her own memorial statue. She is approved of course, and the sketch she gives them is realised in only a few weeks.

It is not grand, not golden or bejeweled, it is simple so that it can be universal. The symbol of her mother’s necklace is engraved onto stainless steel and under it is the message that should have been immortalized decades ago.

“For the women like Kanna, who refused to be oppressed

For the women like Yue, who put their duty before all else in their lives,

And for the women like Kya, who sacrificed everything for their families.

This is for these women, to whom we owe our very existence, we are eternally grateful”

 

> _The deep velvet of your mother and her mother and her mother?_

Zuko is with her when the statue is unveiled, he listens to her speech that leaves the town rattling with applause, he bows his head as she prays to the spirits, and watches as she freezes the monument into the ground with a movement as nayural as her breathing.

When they are riding on the back of his dragon around the tundra Katara can point of frozen trees and blocks of ice and somehow remember what they meant to her in her childhood. The air is cold enough to force even Katara, who grew up in winds like these, to seek respite in his unnaturally warm body. Zuko wonder’s why Katara doesn’t visit more, for although she no longer has family here, from the way she talks it is obvious that this place is home. This is where she feels the most herself, but also where she would be most alone, where the ghosts of her grief are closest to her.

“I think we should move here.” He says without missing a beat between the thought and the suggestion.

The cold is nothing to the heat of the kiss that follows.

 

> _There is a curse that will be broken._


	9. Resurrection

 

> _I see your daughters and their daughters_

Izumi is as confident in motherhood as she is in everything else, her round stomach does nothing to alter her steady, determined, strides as she arrives at the South Pole.

“Are you ready to be a grandmother?” she asks as Katara places a kiss on her belly. Katara breathes in sharply and a smile spreads across her lips. She looks as if she wants to pull Izumi into her arms and never let go, but instead she nods

“Of course I’m ready, it’s the birthday boy of there you should be asking”

Ursa and Azula follow Izumi, Sokka and Toph arrive together. Katara’s children call him Uncle and embrace him as closely as Izumi does. Mai and Ty Lee are hand in hand and so happy, and he is happy too. He thought coming here would be leaving something behind, but when Katara takes his hand in hers, he knows; the South Pole is packed with family

 

> _That night in a dream, the first girl emerges from a slit in my stomach._

Haru is a governor in Omashu now, Jet is gone.

Song is a Doctor in Republic City, Jin moved to the countryside.

Mai is happier than she has ever been, Aang is doing fine.

Zuko wonders about all the people he cared about, the boy he tried to give his knife to, the family he didn’t rob, the soldiers who had joined him in exile. There are so many stories he doesn’t know yet, so many endings that are still in play. Katara tells him he can’t possibly expect to know it all, tells him she’s met so many people in her life that to even try and track them down would take the rest of the time she had. She is right, and Zuko knows that he has a happy ending, even if he didn’t always deserve one. 

 

> _The scar heals into a smile._

He traces the familiar ridges of the rough skin around his left eye, staring into a mirror. His scar has not faded, but somehow it feels that way. It has not hurt him since he was a boy, but the memories of it followed him for decades. Every time someone had touched it he had felt like he was thirteen, knelt before his father. Everytime eyes had lingered he could hear Ozai call him weak. Every time he saw it he saw failure and banishment. But now he just saw a scar, a wound too old to cause him pain.

“You know, if you still want it healed I could ask the North for more Spirit Water,” Katara said, as she sat up in their bed and watched him.

“It is already healed,” He said, turning from the mirror with a smile “I can barely even see it anymore”

 

> I _wake as the second girl crawls headfirst up my throat,_

Kya visits the south pole more than her brothers. Bumi is climbing the ranks of the army. Tenzin is rebuilding a lost society. But Kya is just living.

Zuko is glad that of all their children, Toph’s and Suki’s included, one of them is living a normal life. Not burdened with a nation or a war or a career. Not desperate to follow in the footsteps of greatness or to avoid it.

“I’m glad Mom has you,” Kya says out of the blue when they are alone “Dad, he’s my dad but…” She doesn’t finish, but Zuko understands better than anyone how complicated that relationship can be.

“Aang is a great man, an excellent leader, and the world owes him a great deal.” Zuko says “He was one of my closest friends and the first of my enemies to try and forgive me” He continues “Aang is a great many things, but he was not good for Katara”

“No, he wasn’t good for me either” Kya’s words are just as true as Zuko’s, but far more painful to hear. 

 

> _A flower blossoming out of the hole in my face._


	10. Redemption

 

> _My grandma said nothing real can be threatened._

She knew the letter would be painful.

Aang spills himself onto the parchment without a filter. Anger, sadness, and love in every line. Accusations followed by questions followed by ultimatums, and Katara cannot even begin to reply.

“Why did you leave me?”

That is a question Katara couldn't forgive, that after all this time he still couldn’t see her.

“A man will try to make you doubt yourself, but you must never let him ”

Not Aang’s words, but her grandmother’s. She is glad she has them now.

 

> _With every tear came redemption._

Katara had been a teenager when the war ended, and Aang had been her destiny. Romance would come later, she had been sure of that; the love she knew he felt for her would be returned in time. Maybe it had been. She wasn’t sure anymore.

But she knew it had been right to leave, that the years she’d spent alone were not her fault, that she was loveable and she deserved happiness of her own.

She invites him to the South Pole, as her friend and as the father of her children. But not as a husband.

“I’m so sorry, Katara.”

He knows his words are only a drop of water in the desert of their history, but that is all he can offer.

Not even the Avatar can change the past.

 

> _My torturer became my remedy._

Time marches forwards, and its footprints begin to fade.

Aang dies. Sokka dies. Toph vanishes.

Suki Dies. Mai dies. Azula’s mind slips away. 

Their children grow, their grandchildren follow, the world changes slowly.

Life isn’t perfect and they aren’t always happy, but those bad days are the first to be lost in their memories. The good days are burnt into their minds eternally. Tenzin’s wedding, Iroh’s birth, and Korra.

Every day with Korra is a gift. As she grows, she becomes more like Aang and less at the same time. They teach her, just as they taught Aang, just as they taught their own children, and pledge to keep her safe, to ensure she’s strong enough to look after herself. When she leaves, Katara opens the gate and hopes that Korra will find friends to bear the burden of the world with. Hopes she will find the happiness Katara has far sooner than Katara did.

 

> _So we're gonna heal, we're gonna start again._

Historians will write about them and they will get it wrong, perhaps Katara will be painted as cruel for abandoning her family, or as a victim, saved by the Fire Lord. Zuko knows that in many people’s eyes he is once again the villain, the man who stole the Avatar’s wife away.

Even with Aang’s forgiveness and Mai’s friendship and a lifetime of experience he still isn’t sure he’s doing the right thing. The sideways glances and hushed mutters dislodge his certainty and he is filled with the self-doubt that plagued his adolescence.

But as soon as he is home, the moment he sets eyes on Katara and he is in her arms, he is reminded of how right everything is.

 

> _The audience applauds, but we can't hear them._


End file.
